Standing in the Way

In this film about geomilitary mapping in Mexico, we learn about the academic/non-profit front of the U.S. Army project to militarize indigenous territories as a means of privatizing communally owned land. As a process of gathering cultural intelligence to be used by the neoliberal axis in taking these lands, mapping as a form of spying feeds into the U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office program for supporting the U.S.-Mexico Merida Initiative, a military/market strategy for eliminating indigenous autonomy. As we see in reports from Oaxaca, mapping culture is a way of mapping resistance by those Wall Street and the Pentagon see as standing in the way: the indigenous peoples of Mexico. While mapping by indigenous communities for their own purposes can be an important part of cultural survival and revitalization, in the hands of their enemies, this knowledge is a devastating weapon.